HELLO
Since we have 2 small dogs that sleep at the bottom of the bed I don't want them touching the actual bed quilt or sheets, so I buy cheap sheets, embroider strips, cut everything up into quilt blocks, and then put together to make an "illusion " of a quilt to cover up and protect the real thing (sheets and quilt) at night (sleep) time. It washes up beautifully every week and my quilt is nice and safe.
Oh the things we do for our beloved animals.
Karen

What machine and/or software did you use to make those blocks?! I need to get it!

Thanks for the kind words.

Have to admit this was really easy. Since I only used one color for the embroidery designs (I've had collected for over 10 years so sorry I don't know where I got them), each design only took 2 to 4 minutes to embroider. I used my Baby Lock BMP6. I cut one long strip of fabric and marked cutting lines, then just embroideed one after another - saved on stabilizer this way. And instead of using sewing machine to sew blocks together I used my serger - every block was even and now I have that nice fancy serger strong seam on the back.

There are times I don't take it off, so one day I just figured if I have to look at it, I should just make something nice. I used to just put one big sheet over the real quilt.

The hardest thing for me was doing the borders. With even and odd blocks I couldn't get the line up correct - that took me 4 days to figure out. First I just wanted solid alternating colors, wasn't happy, then I made those into triangles, wasn't happy, then I cut up those triangles and made more triangles. Then had to figure out how to "connect" the corners. But am happy with the final results.

Well, I won't be getting a BMP6. Actually, machine embroidery rarely interests me, but your blocks resemble sashiko, which I LOVE. But I really appreciate you explaining it and sharing this clever idea with us. Your bed cover is excellent on it's own, I can only imagine the quilt it's protecting. I love mangos, and a coworker once told me that the mangos here are what they feed to animals in her home country. I just thought, if these delicious mangos are considered animal feed there, the mangos people eat must be really heavenly!